This is the fourth in a series of articles on jazz musicians in popular music and jazz and popular music as fields of study in higher education. In my previous articles, I detailed the enormous influence that jazz musicians have had on popular music since the 1960s. This may, early on, have been a matter […]

Part I: The Machine(s) Jazz and classical musicians have long had a troubled relationship with pop music. (By “pop music,” I mean all styles outside of classical and jazz—country, rock, hip-hop, rap, etc.—any style that enjoys a double-digit market share is properly called “popular”, as opposed to the dismal 4-6% (combined) that is shared by […]

The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) is an organization that assesses and accredits music schools and music departments across the United States. Towards that end, NASM develops and articulates general curriculum guidelines for music programs in higher education. Music departments must then adhere to these guidelines if they wish to be accredited, […]

Paul Resnikoff posted this sobering graph at Digital Music News that shows US Department of Labor/Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) statistics from 1999-2011 on music sales and music employment. Needless to say, the picture is not pretty. It seems that despite the RIAA’s extraordinary attempts to curb piracy and file sharing (including suing single moms and storming college […]

In January, I attended the 2012 Jazz Education Network (JEN) conference in Louisville, Kentucky. It was my first time attending this (relatively) new organization’s conference. I had avoided going previously because I was still smarting from the self-inflicted spontaneous combustion of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) in 2008. The JEN conference was similar to […]

When I wrote about Kickstarter in a recent post entitled Beggars’ Banquet: New Music Schemes for New Music Dreams, I mentioned Pomplamoose as a group that seems to be doing very well using their own creative marketing ideas (primarily on Youtube). They’ve received several (hopefully) lucrative advertising contracts with Hyundai and Toyota, they are touring […]

Part I: The Music I’ve played hundreds, if not thousands, of weddings, holiday get-togethers, corporate parties and other similar events. And I’ve done these types of “gigs” all over North America–Toronto, London, Windsor, New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Denver, Boulder, Vail, Aspen, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Calgary, Edmonton, and probably another […]

A friend of mine sent me a New York Times article by Ben Ratliff from 2009 entitled Jazz and Metal, Riffs in Arms. I read it, and told my friend that I found it “strange” to which he responded “what’s strange about this?” Ratliff is a noted jazz writer, critic, and historian, so I was […]

Recently, I ran across a British jazz group online called The Quartet and was surprised to find that the guitar player in the ensemble was Jack Hues, lead singer/guitarist from the iconic ’80s band, Wang Chung. Their big hits, Dance Hall Days and Everybody Have Fun Tonight (Everybody Wang Chung Tonight), were great dance tunes, a bit fluffy […]

For a few years in the mid-1980s, I played in a pop music cover band in the Windsor/Detroit area. It was a lot of fun, and we actually made a reasonable amount of money. We generally played anywhere from four to seven nights a week, and our weekly take-home per member was about $300. In […]